A major component of public health research is the collection of information from study participants, by mail, telephone and in-person surveys. The Evaluation Shared Resource (ESR) provides technical support to projects and scientists in the areas of survey implementation, quality control, and data management. Specific tasks carried out on behalf of projects include sample development, questionnaire pre-testing, personal and telephone interviewing, mailing and tracking of mailed questionnaires, editing/coding, data entry, programming support, database management, data cleaning, response/refusal rate reporting, respondent tracking, and project documentation. Projects which use ESR gain efficiencies from having standardized procedures, trained staff, and technical resources, such as CATI (Computer Aided Telephone Interviewing), which serve multiple projects. The resource provided support for more than 25 peer-reviewed NIH research projects in the 1996-97 fiscal year. While ESR was originally established to serve the needs of investigators primarily in the Program in Cancer Prevention Research and the Division of Public Health Sciences, it has recently broadened its scope in the direction of the interdisciplinary goals of the FHCRC.